steveanderson.digital

Kirschenbaum’s Tumblr blog on his book project - http://trackchangesbook.tumblr.com

Matthew Kirschenbaum’s Literary History of Word Processing, Harvard University Press blog post:

It’s interesting to see how Kirschenbaum’s research on the effects of one technological innovation—word processing—is being so shaped by his own embrace of another, social networking. Until recently, it wasn’t often that we got to watch research unfold so publicly, but Kirschenbaum’s style of transparent, internet-based process documentation is becoming more and more common, especially among practitioners of the digital humanities.

Over the years I’ve used WordStar, WordPerfect, Microsoft Word, and many other word processing programs. At the moment I’m moving to Scrivener for larger projects like my dissertation, and Apple Pages for everyday writing. (In 2025, this has changed quite a bit!)

WordStar running in DOS, ca. 1980s (via Wikipedia)

(Originally published on my old site, “The Digital Imaginary” [imaginary.digital], on February 10th, 2015 – revised and republished April 3rd, 2025.)